CHAPTER XXIV
An old man, with his face turned to the sea, was making a weary attemptat digging upon a small potato patch. The blaze of the tropical sun hadbecome lost an hour or so before in a strange, grey mist, rising notfrom the sea, but from the swamps which lay here and there--brilliant,verdant patches of poison and pestilence. With the mist came a moist,sticky heat, the air was fetid. Trent wiped the perspiration from hisforehead and breathed hard. This was an evil moment for him.
Monty turned round at the sound of his approaching footsteps. Thetwo men stood face to face. Trent looked eagerly for some sign ofrecognition--none came.
"Don't you know me?" Trent said huskily. "I'm Scarlett Trent--we wentup to Bekwando together, you know. I thought you were dead, Monty, or Iwouldn't have left you."
"Eh! What!"
Monty mumbled for a moment or two and was silent. A look of dulldisappointment struggled with the vacuity of his face. Trent noticedthat his hands were shaking pitifully and his eyes were bloodshot.
"Try and think, Monty," he went on, drawing a step nearer to him. "Don'tyou remember what a beastly time we had up in the bush--how they kept usday after day in that villainous hut because it was a fetish week, andhow after we had got the concessions those confounded niggers followedus! They meant our lives, Monty, and I don't know how you escaped! Come!make an effort and pull yourself together. We're rich men now, both ofus. You must come back to England and help me spend a bit."
Monty had recovered a little his power of speech. He leaned over hisspade and smiled benignly at his visitor.
"There was a Trentham in the Guards," he said slowly, "the HonourableGeorge Trentham, you know, one of poor Abercrombie's sons, but I thoughthe was dead. You must dine with me one night at the Travellers'! I'vegiven up eating myself, but I'm always thirsty."
He looked anxiously away towards the town and began to mumble. Trent wasin despair. Presently he began again.
"I used to belong to the Guards,--always dined there till Jacques left.Afterwards the cooking was beastly, and--I can't quite remember whereI went then. You see--I think I must be getting old. I don't rememberthings. Between you and me," he sidled a little closer to Trent, "Ithink I must have got into a bit of a scrape of some sort--I feel asthough there was a blank somewhere...."
Again he became unintelligible. Trent was silent for several minutes.He could not understand that strained, anxious look which crept intoMonty's face every time he faced the town. Then he made his last effort.
"Monty, do you remember this?"
Zealously guarded, yet a little worn at the edges and faded, he drew thepicture from its case and held it before the old man's blinking eyes.There was a moment of suspense, then a sharp, breathless cry which endedin a wail.
"Take it away," Monty moaned. "I lost it long ago. I don't want to seeit! I don't want to think."
"I have come," Trent said, with an unaccustomed gentleness in his tone,"to make you think. I want you to remember that that is a picture ofyour daughter. You are rich now and there is no reason why you shouldnot come back to her. Don't you understand, Monty?"
It was a grey, white face, shrivelled and pinched, weak eyes withoutdepth, a vapid smile in which there was no meaning. Trent, carried awayfor a moment by an impulse of pity, felt only disappointment at thehopelessness of his task. He would have been honestly glad to havetaken the Monty whom he had known back to England, but not this man!For already that brief flash of awakened life seemed to have died away.Monty's head was wagging feebly and he was casting continually little,furtive glances towards the town.
"Please go away," he said. "I don't know you and you give me a pain inmy head. Don't you know what it is to feel a buzz, buzz, buzzing inside?I can't remember things. It's no use trying."
"Monty, why do you look so often that way?" Trent said quietly. "Is someone coming out from the town to see you?"
Monty threw a quick glance at him and Trent sighed. For the glance wasfull of cunning, the low cunning of the lunatic criminal.
"No one, no one," he said hastily. "Who should come to see me? I'm onlypoor Monty. Poor old Monty's got no friends. Go away and let me dig."
Trent walked a few paces apart, and passed out of the garden to a low,shelving bank and looked downward where a sea of glass rippled on to thebroad, firm sands. What a picture of desolation! The grey, hot mist,the whitewashed cabin, the long, ugly potato patch, the weird, patheticfigure of that old man from whose brain the light of life had surelypassed for ever. And yet Trent was puzzled. Monty's furtive glanceinland, his half-frightened, half-cunning denial of any anticipatedvisit suggested that there was some one else who was interested in hisexistence, and some one too with whom he shared a secret. Trent lit acigar and sat down upon the sandy turf. Monty resumed his digging. Trentwatched him through the leaves of a stunted tree, underneath which hehad thrown himself.
For an hour or more nothing happened. Trent smoked, and Monty, who hadapparently forgotten all about his visitor, plodded away amongst thepotato furrows, with every now and then a long, searching look towardsthe town. Then there came a black speck stealing across the broadrice-field and up the steep hill, a speck which in time took to itselfthe semblance of a man, a Kru boy, naked as he was born save for aragged loin-cloth, and clutching something in his hand. He was invisibleto Trent until he was close at hand; it was Monty whose changed attitudeand deportment indicated the approach of something interesting. He hadrelinquished his digging and, after a long, stealthy glance towards thehouse, had advanced to the extreme boundary of the potato patch. Hisbehaviour here for the first time seemed to denote the hopeless lunatic.He swung his long arms backward and forwards, cracking his fingers, andtalked unintelligibly to himself, hoarse, guttural murmurings withoutsense or import. Trent changed his place and for the first time saw theKru boy. His face darkened and an angry exclamation broke from his lips.It was something like this which he had been expecting.
The Kru boy drew nearer and nearer. Finally he stood upright onthe rank, coarse grass and grinned at Monty, whose lean hands wereoutstretched towards him. He fumbled for a moment in his loin-cloth.Then he drew out a long bottle and handed it up. Trent stepped out asMonty's nervous fingers were fumbling with the cork. He made a grab atthe boy who glided off like an eel. Instantly he whipped out a revolverand covered him.
"Come here," he cried.
The boy shook his head. "No understand."
"Who sent you here with that filthy stuff?" he asked sternly. "You'dbest answer me."
The Kru boy, shrinking away from the dark muzzle of that motionlessrevolver, was spellbound with fear. He shook his head.
"No understand."
There was a flash of light, a puff of smoke, a loud report. The Kru boyfell forward upon his face howling with fear. Monty ran off towards thehouse mumbling to himself.
"The next time," Trent said coolly, "I shall fire at you instead of atthe tree. Remember I have lived out here and I know all about you andyour kind. You can understand me very well if you choose, and you'vejust got to. Who sends you here with that vile stuff?"
"Massa, I tell! Massa Oom Sam, he send me!"
"And what is the stuff?"
"Hamburgh gin, massa! very good liquor! Please, massa, point him pistolthe other way."
Trent took up the flask, smelt its contents and threw it away with alittle exclamation of disgust.
"How often have you been coming here on this errand?" he asked sternly.
"Most every day, massa--when him Mr. Price away."
Trent nodded.
"Very good," he said. "Now listen to me. If ever I catch you round hereagain or anywhere else on such an errand, I'll shoot you like a dog. Nowbe off."
The boy bounded away with a broad grin of relief. Trent walked up to thehouse and asked for the missionary's wife. She came to him soon, in whatwas called the parlour. A frail, anaemic-looking woman with tired eyesand weary expression.
"I'm sorry to trouble you, Mrs. Price," Trent said, plunging at
onceinto his subject, "but I want to speak to you about this old man, Monty.You've had him some time now, haven't you?"
"About four years," she answered. "Captain Francis left him withmy husband; I believe he found him in one of the villages inland, aprisoner."
Trent nodded.
"He left you a little money with him, I believe."
The woman smiled faintly.
"It was very little," she said, "but such as it is, we have nevertouched it. He eats scarcely anything and we consider that the littlework he has done has about paid us for keeping him."
"Did you know," Trent asked bluntly, "that he had been a drunkard?"
"Captain Francis hinted as much," the woman answered. "That was onereason why he wanted to leave him with us. He knew that we did not allowanything in the house."
"It was a pity," Trent said, "that you could not have watched him alittle more out of it. Why, his brain is sodden with drink now!"
The woman was obviously honest in her amazement. "How can that be?" sheexclaimed. "He has absolutely no money and he never goes off our land."
"He has no need," Trent answered bitterly. "There are men in Attra whowant him dead, and they have been doing their best to hurry him off. Icaught a Kru boy bringing him gin this afternoon. Evidently it has beena regular thing."
"I am very sorry indeed to hear this," the woman said, "and I am suremy husband will be too. He will feel that, in a certain measure, he hasbetrayed Captain Francis's trust. At the same time we neither of us hadany idea that anything of this sort was to be feared, or we would havekept watch."
"You cannot be blamed," Trent said. "I am satisfied that you knewnothing about it. Now I am going to let you into a secret. Monty is arich man if he had his rights, and I want to help him to them. I shalltake him back to England with me, but I can't leave for a week or so. Ifyou can keep him till then and have some one to watch him day and night,I'll give your husband a hundred pounds for your work here, and buildyou a church. It's all right! Don't look as though I were mad. I'm avery rich man, that's all, and I shan't miss the money, but I wantto feel that Monty is safe till I can start back to England. Will youundertake this?"
"Yes," the woman answered promptly, "we will. We'll do our honest best."
Trent laid a bank-note upon the table.
"Just to show I'm in earnest," he remarked, rising. "I shall beup-country for about a month. Look after the old chap well and you'llnever regret it."
Trent went thoughtfully back to the town. He had committed himself nowto a definite course of action. He had made up his mind to take Montyback with him to England and face the consequences.